Cornelia's picture was no better than too many others that were
accepted, it was refused.

XXXIV.

The blow was not softened to Cornelia by her having prophesied to
Charmian as well as to herself, that she knew her picture would be
refused. Now she was aware that at the bottom of her heart she had
always hoped and believed it would be accepted. She had kept it all
from her mother, but she had her fond, proud visions of how her mother
would look when she got her letter saying that she had a picture in the
Exhibition, and how she would throw on her sacque and bonnet, and run
up to Mrs. Burton for an explanation and full sense of the honor. In
these fancies Cornelia even had them come to New York, to see her
picture in position; it was not on the line, of course, and yet it was
not skyed.

Her pride was not involved, and she suffered no sting of wounded vanity
from its rejection: her hurt was in a tenderer place. She would not
have cared how many people knew of her failure, if her mother and Mrs.
Burton need not have known; but she wrote faithfully home of it, and
tried to make neither much nor little of it. She forbade Charmian the
indignation which she would have liked to vent, but she let her cry
over the event with her. No one else knew that it had actually happened
except Wetmore and Ludlow; she was angry with them at first for
encouraging her to offer the picture, but Wetmore came and was so
mystified and humbled by its refusal, that she forgave him and even
comforted him for his part in the affair.

"She acted like a little man about it," he reported to Ludlow. "She'll
do. When a girl can take a blow like that the way she does, she makes
you wish that more fellows were girls. When I had my first picture
refused, it laid me up. But I'm not going to let this thing rest. I'm
going to see if that picture can't be got into the American Artists'."

"Better not," said Ludlow so vaguely that Wetmore thought he must mean
something.

"Why?"

"Oh--I don't believe she'd like it."

"What makes you think so? Have you seen her?"

"No----"

"You haven't? Well, Ludlow, _I_ didn't lose any time. Perhaps you think
there was no one else to blame for the mortification of that poor
child."

"No, I don't. I am to blame, too. I encouraged her to try--I urged
her."

"Then I should think you would go and tell her so."

"Ah, I think she knows it. If I told her anything, I should tell her no
one was to blame but myse